Best Practices Series

"Best Practices"

Luke 11:37-54

A sermon for 7/24/22 – Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Pastor John Bright

Luke 11 “44 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like graves which are not seen, and the men who walk over them are not aware of them.”

45 Then one of the lawyers answered and said to Him, “Teacher, by saying these things You reproach us also.”

46 And He said, “Woe to you also, lawyers! For you load men with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers.”

Pause right there. Those words I just read; they were “Breathed by God”! God wants you to hear His Word right now! So, what is your response? Do you want to transformed by that Word or do you want to be informed about the words? You have to choose.

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If I had a dollar for every time somebody talked to me about hypocrites in the church, I would be a rich man. Some thoughts –

Not going to church because you say there are hypocrites there is like not going to the gym because there are out of shape people there😊

A church sign – “This church is not full of hypocrites. There’s always room for more” 😊

The next time someone tells you, "The Church is full of a bunch of hypocrites." You can respond, "You don't even know the half of it." 😊 (quote from Kevin DeYoung)

In Luke 11, we find Jesus confronting the “Religious Folks” in His day – Pharisees, scribes, experts on the law – and Jesus has harsh words for them. Can you accept a Jesus that is confrontational? In our modern-day terminology – Jesus got in their faces!

The Pharisees were a minority of the religious leadership. At that time, the Sadducees were the majority. What set the Pharisees apart was their adherence to the laws developed over time – the oral tradition – that interpreted how to keep the commandments of God. In that day, it was accepted that there were 613 commandments in the Five Books of Moses (Torah) – Genesis through Deuteronomy. Thousands of rules and regulations were developed to keep these commandments.

When Jesus rebukes these men, He sounds very much like the Prophets of the Old Testament – Isaiah, Micah and Amos. Those were the ones who brought the Word of God to the Israelites and they were ignored. Now, the actual Word of God stands in their midst to give a rebuke – right in their faces!

They care more about the outside, v. 37-41

“37 And as He spoke, a certain Pharisee asked Him to dine with him. So He went in and sat down to eat. 38 When the Pharisee saw it, he marveled that He had not first washed before dinner.

39 Then the Lord said to him, “Now you Pharisees make the outside of the cup and dish clean, but your inward part is full of greed and wickedness. 40 Foolish ones! Did not He who made the outside make the inside also? 41 But rather give alms of such things as you have; then indeed all things are clean to you.”

Jesus, a guest in the home of a Pharisee, does not wash His hands before coming to the table. This is familiar to me from when I was a kid, from my own kids, and now with my grandson who is seven and a half. Getting kids to wash their hands is an ongoing battle – it always has been and it always will be 😊

While the washing of hands was only prescribed for the priests in the temple, Exodus 30:17-21, it was the Pharisees who added this to be practiced by all Jews. In the Gospel of Mark, there is even more detail about their practices of washing – Mark 7 “3 For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands in a special way, holding the tradition of the elders. 4 When they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other things which they have received and hold, like the washing of cups, pitchers, copper vessels, and couches.”

Jesus insists that the condition of the inside of the person/cup is just as important as the outside of the person/cup. Why are we called hypocrites? Because we act one way on Sunday when we are at church and are the exact opposite at work, at home, at school, and in our community.

When I was serving on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, a lady in the church offered to take me around to visit members who did not attend worship. One man, I was warned, “cussed like a sailor.” (My apologies to any Navy veterans!) We got there, visited for half an hour or so, and then walked outside to go. The whole time, there was no profanity. I told him it would be good to see him at worship. He replied, “I don’t come because I never when I might let out a cuss word.” To which I replied, “Oh, I think you can control it if the whole time we were here you had very clean speech. It sounds like an excuse to me.” Out of three people standing there, I was the only one without a look of shock.